Chase
by hewhoistomriddle
Summary: Five times Uchiha Itachi watched Uchiha Shisui's back, and he scores one for the stalkers. ItaShi. Oneshot.


**Title: **Five times Uchiha Itachi watched Uchiha Shisui's back

**Alternative: **Another rehash story in which I switched characterization at least five times.

**Disclaimer: **Masashi Kishimoto. Stole a Sappho line.

**Notes: **Written about one paragraph at a time, so mood changes sporadically, concepts crop up unexpected like dandelions and disappear quickly like good intentions. Um, melodramatic, word-vomitty and iffy timeline at best, but you know me like that.

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* * *

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One.

Maybe it was the explosions beating like wardrums fissuring the earth with every beat , maybe it was his heart, but the thrumming in his ears is loud enough to dull his mother's words even as she bends close and whispers instructions – _lie low until the smoke clears –_ pressing important secrets like shiny coins into tiny hands.

As a good son, Itachi tries to listen to her, keeps himself safe even as the smoke and the endless nights carry his clansmen off across borders and battlelines. For days, he sees to himself in an empty house that was fast becoming an enclave. From the window that used to open to Konoha's vista, shuttered now, he watches and waits and forces himself to keep still, blow out all the lights before nightfall, count the rations, and refrain from observing as the lies the village tell them come apart like brick after brick of a toppling tower.

_You'll be fine. No one's going to tear you apart. The hurt will go away. War will not reach Konoha._

Itachi won't ever quite forget when the war does come spilling over with so acidic an air that it threatens to burn through his skin and corrode his bones. He completely remembers many things: the rush of panic, that darkness that feels like so many disembodied hands, the masculinity of hunger, the shroud of fear. Itachi props himself up even as he is hollowed out, sturdy by the mere force of his will.

His endurance is a wrung-out sheath, stretched and used too much, so one morning within a dreaded quiet lull he walks out into the open, vacated street, looking for good memories to store, as though his heart was a granary.

He sees Shisui then, the relative he's heard of, seen, _assessed _in fact, but never quite met. Shisui is the child they send to the frontlines, agile on his feet enough to blur through no-man's-land, cunning enough to trust with messages. Shisui is the boy who pays most dearly for his prodigy.

_Aniki! _He almost calls out, but the sight of his cousin's pallid skin leaves his voice in tatters. Itachi will remember the wartorn era like this, juxtaposed against death and destruction and fire, Shisui's spine bowed inwards, elegant, thinned by sickness and adult seriousness, beautiful like the barren and desolate winter, twig-like and so very, very cold. He wants to map it, where the trails are splayed out in bone and sinew, and know that it will always lead him back to the instant when he decides to (never feel so brittle ever again) hate war.

A sharp voice behind him breaks the lull.

"Shisui!" Itachi's aunt cries, a flash of long braided hair and jounin fatigues and she is already kneeling down before him, checking his limbs for injuries. Finding none so serious, she shakes his shoulders in frustration. "Where were you? Why didn't you stay?"

"Thought I wouldn't come back?" Shisui grinned even as his mother rattled his bones in her disbelief, his gaze just a trifle foggy. "You must not want me back enough." And it is a terrible thing to say, even considering the levity by which Shisui was supposed to live by. He never answers his mother's questions either, perhaps seeing no need to, because one day he'll grow up to be a man who'll outstrip life by sheer speed and such questions will be nothing but shackles to him.

"His little sister died, Itachi. They're not really alright," His own mother says softly,pulling his gaze away, gripping Itachi's arm tight. Her words make something horrific unfurl at the pit of his gut, she still smells like ash and antiseptic, and it's suddenly an effort to cast her a welcome.

He doesn't see Shisui again until the war ends, when his mother is gone and he acts like his battle comrades are the only family he's ever known. It is a random encounter, their gazes slither to each other's scrubbed-clean faces, and with their eyes they agree that they won't be affected by what they just lived through, being shinobi of highest breeding.

They believe it for all of two hours.

* * *

_Two._

"_He seems to be a god, that man."_

It takes Shisui one year to prove to his iron-willed jounin that he doesn't need to take an exam to prove he's chuunin quality. The exams are held in Iwa that year, and two weeks after the fact, he strolls out the doors with the green vest and takes his leave with exaggerated swagger that's more for public adoration. Behind closed doors and with older company, he shrugs off the achievement he pretends to 's only a rank, not a step forward, and therefore doesn't count.

So when everyone else retires to enjoy the glorious peace – it's a gorgeous summer, written in full trees and juicy scents, intricate birds in jewel tones and lazy, lazy sunlight all day long – he leaves the compound everyday like a prodigal son and works.

Itachi follows him past the rooftops and archways that are Konoha in reconstruction and observes. In the morning, he mostly sees his cousin pleading with Morino Ibiki while the man studiously ignores him or trying to get close to a Yamanaka, _any _Yamanaka. (If he chances upon the Yondaime, he makes himself scarce and just plain glares at the man.) In the afternoon, he trains.

And Itachi, while training himself, watches him from a distance. Shisui's movements are smoother and more economical that he's shown to most. Aquiline. The skin of his back is weather-beaten, beaded with sweat, the shoulders thin and tense as he attempts basic chakra control. A breeze blows the hair from his face, and the earth splits into dendritic patterns before shattering beneath his feet.

Itachi, confident after a lifetime of silver spoons and razor-sharp faculties, is predictably unimpressed. Shisui was born with plenty of raw talent, but his learning curve blew Shisui's out of the water any day.

If he continues working just as hard, a halfstep and he'd be level with his cousin, which is only a little more than unheard of in their circle. This, he tells himself, since he's only ever looked up to Shisui, was expected. It shouldn't mean the world.

No one quite knows when they became friends, but Itachi thinks it happened upon their twin training fields, when the light has long since died from the horizon, Shisui caught him staring, smiled widely, and misunderstood.

"Activate your sharingan. It'll last longer."

Above constellations winked from the sky, and they simply kind of nodded to each other, and that was that.

* * *

_Three._

The mind is a realm Uchiha Shisui knows too much of. As is politics, and back alley fights.

It's one group's word against another's about what really happened one night, when the waters of river Nakano rose far higher than usual and the rush of rain wash sound and sigh and evidence, who started what and who said what, and the Hokage had enough foresight to stare everyone down before insults sharper than senbon started flying. It's almost inconsequential, in the greater spectrum of events, if only it didn't quite underline the flaring disdain the Uchiha held, and the more dangerous, low-burning discontent that seeped insidiously in the air like the scent of rust from long-ago bloodshed.

An invisible line is drawn, there is no fighting, but – elbows in crowds, closed establishments, dirty dirty looks only a shade removed from a knife in the back – there might as well be.

The first time Itachi was on the receiving end of it, Shisui is across the street, mouth slightly parted in surprise, or perhaps indignance.

Innate superiority is not a thing Shisui usually wore on his sleeve, not when he had so many other cards up there, but when it serves his purpose, Itachi knows Shisui has no qualms using it. His cousin is not unaware how he makes others feel inexplicably dimmer in light of his candleburn brilliance, especially when it's shoved right in their faces. Shisui's intimate understanding of the human vanity is, after all, what makes him such as natural at mindfucking.

As they watch the perpetrator walk away, every shortcoming Shisui listed weighing heavily in his step, Shisui talks to him, his poison tongue stoppered.

"Don't turn the other cheek, Uchiha," – like Itachi ever needed reminding – "It's not us, not you either."

"Retaliation isn't better."

Shisui grits his teeth in exasperation, imperceptible to anyone less attuned than Itachi, his face shifts, a smile unfurling as a venomous flower in bloom. "Just now it was."

~0~

In the safety of their private training ground, to a captivated audience of one, Itachi performs the gymnastics Sasuke so loves, so choreographed and full of flair it's almost theatrical, but only physical motion is what his little brother can appreciate right now, not strategy that was lifeblood of every captain, not mindgames.

Once Shisui had passed by – _just taking a shortcut, carry on_ – his cousin had paused for the slightest second. When he's done, and monumentally without skipping a beat, he expects nothing more than a quick deprecatory glance, perhaps a raised eyebrow. He receives exactly that.

Sasuke is happy, obliviously maybe, but when all is said and done, that's what matters.

~0~

The number of inter-clan diminish over time; the tension and accusations remain, misting on every known surface, the players are commissioned away. Brushes with foreign shinobi at the border force the populace into a cohesive unit, internal clashes forgotten, cooperation unquestioned.

Itachi and Shisui are supposedly on infiltration when they are ambushed by a conflagration and a rain of kunai. Their shadow clones don't stand a chance, but they see the enemy now, and it's only a little disconcerting how surprised Shisui is that it isn't friendly fire.

He watches Shisui's back, pulls him up to the sky when the ground explodes in a caustic swamp under them.

"Didn't foresee that," Shisui murmurs.

"Defend," Itachi tells him. The adrenaline that had just moments ago exploded into his blood went down to a swish. "Dodge at least. You're not invincible."

"Easy to forget that when it seems like I can foresee everything." Shisui holds a tapered finger to his temple, looking entirely smug.

When he was seven, Itachi heard rumors of the boy who tried to jump a thousand feet in the hair from Hokage monument, all by himself and no safety net. He lived, brushed himself off and never tried again. Itachi thinks now that suicidal boy will always be part of Shisui.

~0~

Somewhere along the line, Itachi takes a hit so bad he doesn't expect to live past the hour. His vision swims in and out when he finally slits the enemy's throat. As he struggles to keep himself lucid, he can see Shisui fighting – he has to make it clear,_ this wasn't a set-up, no, it wasn't, it wasn't – _he won't allow his death to trigger a civil war, and Shisui has to be told before he realizes he's outnumbered and outclassed and alone, before he flickers away and report to the clan at the peak of their aggression that Uchiha Itachi was killed and how he nearly died himself, their two prodigies, on a sham of a mission.

Itachi dimly register that Shisui's not doing what he does best and running. Rather, his looks angry.

Angriest he's ever seen, Itachi thinks as he finally passes out.

~0~

Except no one's really seen Uchiha Shisui at his angriest, not since the war and he'd only been six. He'd fought, burned like an inferno, back then, madly and relentlessly, when the shadowy flare in his blood caught light somewhere in the blur of rage and destruction. He'd cause the apocalypse now, if he were serious, because after a decade of jokingly pulling himself back whenever he became a little too good, always teasing the edges, Shisui's never learnt his limits.

When he sees Itachi unconscious, probably very dead, he realizes he has none.

Shisui's never apologized for being what he was - a real bastard - and he spares no one nothing. His sharingan glows as the illusion-cum-reality holds and he tears the enemy-nin to pieces with barbed words in a dead wife's voice, carves accusations plucked from the other's mind, forging weaponry from the darkest thoughts and memories.

For a moment, he's a monster too unfathomable.

~0~

Itachi lives, but nothing is ever quite the same again.

* * *

_Four._

Shisui is different, imperceptibly so, like the purest crystal taken out to light so it no longer holds a color of its own but filters reflections of the world.

He tries a girlfriend. (It doesn't last.) He visits more often, entertaining Sasuke with ripe, red tomatoes. (What Itachi admires is the fact that he even knows Sasuke exists.) He takes to helping people. (Though only when its implicitly asked or obviously needed otherwise he passes right on by.) He stops saying _honestly? I don't care _to every inquiry addressed at him.

He becomes better – better comrade, better friend, better brother, better human being.

The world seeps into him, tiny details he never used to notice wrap around him like tendrils at his feet, sutures, shackles.

~0~

In the compound, Itachi overhears a relative giving testament to how Uchiha Shisui actually gives a damn about them now. This is proven wrong one night under a canopy of stars, when Itachi cares to mention how everyone is so pleased with the change. Shisui is silent for a moment, his profile stony and unreadable, then he shakes his head with a scoff.

"About you, I might care," Then he smirks, in the way he often does when he smothers the truth in a hundred infuriating inflections. "I'll have to say though – you'll get lonely in my heart, since you're pretty much the only one there."

Itachi is still overanalyzing the words when Shisui snaps at him – _geez, say something why don't you –_ and Itachi can almost see the wings on his cousin's feet spread wide open, ready to take flight.

"Thank you," he says; his whole trilling heart is in his hands, and Itachi is astonished at it.

"Thank you?" Shisui grins at him, sharingan activated, red and wicked. "I ought to hurt you."

(It's – _they're_ – utterly dysfunctional.)

~0~

Others won't find much to love in them, despite what his mother says in a voice just a little swept by her chagrin. To many thorns and sharp angles, too many claws, gyres too intricate, and too much of a third presence, unnerving like a shadowy birds of war and death, flying in kaleidoscope patterns in a red sky.

Somehow, when it's the two of them, it's okay. Simple as being alive. Friendship should be like this.

~0~

They can't claim it friendship anymore when they're tumbling from bushes, hot on each other's mouth, their laughter not quite iridescent but getting there.

~0~

They lose their virginities on a cold night, perhaps lose a bit of their own souls, and afterwards Shisui looka at him with a slight smile, voice thick as molasses, his gaze only a little awestruck.

_Tell you a secret – wasn't in love with you until just now. _

_Didn't even believe in love. _

_Still don't._

Itachi can tell it's an effort for Shisui to admit it, however abnormally the fashion, to shackle himself when he's tried in every way he can to escape (physical confinement and his own history and even gravity and the speed of light) and grasp at freedom like it was the air he breathed. It's a sacrifice for Shisui.

~0~

Not a day after, Shimura Danzo reminds of what it means to be shinobi. Sacrifice.

(The world is bigger than any two people and love had always never been enough.)

~0~

The bottom's fallen out of the world they're barely keeping together, all the edges are serrated by diverging loyalties, and the sky is crumbling around them in a stream of fire.

"They sent me because they thought I could get through you," Shisui starts the confrontation.

"You knew," Itachi acknowledges.

"Prodigies like you were always the easiest to predict – always do what's most logical," Shisui pauses, lets out a long breath. "And I've watched you. A long, long time."

~0~

"We'll fix this, okay, we'll find a way." Shisui had never before been the better person in the midst of conflict, he'd practically been the devil's advocate, always delicately fuelling whatever fire and smoke there was until it broke into a proverbial storm. But this is him, in love and defanged, words bubbling out of his mouth like a rain of prison chains.

Shisui is finally saying it, the blasphemous word – _we_ – and Itachi remembers a decade spend watching his cousin's back, chasing desperately for reasons that continuously evolved, always falling half a step behind because Shisui wouldn't wait for anything or anyone, would never be the one to follow.

Itachi steps up and holds him, arms around the waist, chin on the shoulder. Finally, they were level.

His embrace is warm, like a home that's there to stay. Itachi can see his fingers entwined and resting on the elegant curve of Shisui's vertebra, the lines and crevices that are a sight more familiar than his own face.

_I love you_, and Shisui's confession is as tender as any accusation.

Itachi, expression deceptively blank, mouth tasting of ash, only nods. Resignation shoots itself into every one of his bones, because he's Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Itachi who'll hurt Shisui, who'll lose Shisui.

Who'll kill Shisui.

Once he'd thought to make a map of his future, Shisui at every turn, but, when his mind's eye remembers banners beneath the shrine depicting stationary wars and dead people''s names and boys so painfully lonely they've closed off the world, this is the only road he'd ever really risk taking.

~0~

Many things about Uchiha Itachi seems delicate, from bone structure to speech to sanity, but, in truth, nothing is. He tells himself it won't hurt.

For a long time, it doesn't.

* * *

_Five._

They can't live for too short a while that their paths won't inevitably cross.

There is sadness in the lines of Shisui's body, dark and deep as the river he died in. Also, anger. Also, helplessness. Shisui who'd once been an apocalypse in himself, now nothing more than a body carried on inglorious phoenix wings, fettered ever so bitterly. Maybe, it is this more than anything that makes Itachi feel regret everything done.

Like a magnet set on its natural path, Shisui's gaze meets his. And Shisui turns away.

Itachi sees a flash of Shisui's back, and he is gripped with the sensation of slipping far, far behind, of losing ground in faster than flickers, of falling. He's older now, old, experienced; tt shouldn't be so devastating.

Shisui had been more than his rival, his lover, more than his friend or brother or someone he'd hated at some point, he was without any clear definition, he'd been before, _a lot_. He'd filled nearly every role worth filling. But now Itachi had had an entire history – a whole slew of yesterdays that titillated with sickness and lies and a desperate bid for peace – without him. The world shouldn't crash simply because of Shisui refused to look at him.

"I'm sorry," Itachi speaks out with a measure of begging, struggling to gain ground, even just a foothold.

There is a pause.

"...hear that swooping sound? I think it was my soul ducking for cover, _from you_." Shisui says with sullen mouth, voice cold as the grave. "It's already _past_ happily ever after, case you didn't notice. There's no point."

Shisui turns to march the earth with the rest of the undead, the arch of the world inexplicably threatens to crash and burn then, but Itachi has spent near a decade measuring Shisui's pace, and this time, there is something erratic in Shisui's walk, like a heart offbeat.

Itachi looks more closely, and Shisui's back is drawn taut by something other than the puppet strings of the forbidden jutsu, tense like a decision yet unmade and still swivelling along razor edges. Wary. Expectant.

Several years ago, he'd seen Shisui just like that, waiting at the village gates before their first mission together with the sun tangling in his hair and his face dewy with youth, when all that was between them was a clean slate and maybe some leery anticipations.

(_Look, I'm not sure if this'll work out but if it's us, it should, right?_)

Shisui is waiting for him to catch up.

And just like that, the brilliant blue sky starts to exist again, a peerless stretch of resurrected possibilities.

* * *

_End._

Rather than mind-control, Shisui's technique became Dementor-like. Even I'm speechless.


End file.
